I had a really good day today.  I’ve just changed roles in my division and my new boss (David) recently bid on and won a tour of King 5 Studios in Seattle at a school auction event.  He was allowed to take a group of people with him and I jumped at the chance to go along.  King 5 is Seattle’s TV station that is affiliated to NBC so we watch the channel all the time.

The studios are in the heart of Seattle and we got there at 3pm for our 2 hour tour.  Our tour guide BJ met us at the door and gave us a little history about the channel explaining how it first started back in 1948.  Then we went upstairs and met one of the producers of the news program and he explained how he worked.  Basically this guy defined the whole news broadcast, he picks the story’s writes what the anchors say and picks the videos that need to be shown, even preparing/editing the videos for the broadcast.

Then we went to the CAPCON room where they observe the feeds from all the networks, send out trucks to collect footage with news reporters and then bring in the footage for the producers to use.

After that it was off for a tour of the studios.  We met with King 5’s Chief Meteorologist Jeff Renner – he was very impressive and told us loads about what he does.  I have to say my opinion of the weather men grew a lot after meeting Jeff.  He was preparing his report when we got there and definitely knew his stuff.  He showed us the green screen and explained how everything worked.  They have this funny little garden outside so he can present the weather on the roof of the building – it was all very cool.

Then it was off to meet the people who control the Audio for all transmissions.  I can’t remember the lady’s name but she was great and explained how it used to take 6 people to control a live show, and due to the computers and technology they use today it’s now 3 people.  Her role was to take queues from the technical director to turn on microphones at the right time and monitor audio levels.  She then took us to meet the technical director.  His role was to turn producers show into a real show.  He understood what camera angles he wanted and would basically run the whole thing.  The producer would sit with him providing guidance if any issues arose.  The last of the three people who control the show was the lady who controlled all the cameras.  Get this all the cameras are robotic.  THere were I think 5 cameras in the studio and she controls their position with a small joy-stick from her desk.  It was really cool.

Next we went to check out the news studio and while we were in there the cameras were moving all over the place following us around.  I think the joy-stick lady was having some fun with us.  It was in the studio that I took the picture below.  Some of the guys on the tour took turns to sit in the chairs and I took some pictures but I liked this one of the empty studio for my posting.  The last person we met was the Sports Anchor, Paul Silvi.  He was great too and answered all our questions.

Then I guess it was getting close to the news broadcast so it was time to go.  I have to say it was a great visit, I was really impressed with the people there, the were very welcoming and down to earth.  They clearly had a great sense of humor as they were giving each other (and us) a hard time for most of the visit – all in good fun of course.

So if you get the chase I definitely recommend you go along, really worth going – thanks David.

The guys were playing hide and seek in boxes today and I caught this shot.